


Eclosion

by summoninglupine



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, F/F, Gen, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21900481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summoninglupine/pseuds/summoninglupine
Summary: Left alone to get on with things whilst Jamie and the Doctor are off on adventures, Zoe, feeling decidedly left out, struggles with the absurdity of 21st century technology, and accidentally makes a new friend. Specifically ignores the audio drama, The Black Hole; for Victoria, this takes place concurrently with the serial, The Two Doctors.
Relationships: Zoe Heriot/Victoria Waterfield
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	Eclosion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AuroraCloud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraCloud/gifts).



_“I got Victoria to where she wanted to go, though why she wants to learn graphology, I’ve no idea,” he said as he busied himself, fussing around the console, the screen flickering ahead of him._

_“Ah. Will we ever get back to her, though?” Jamie asked doubtfully._

_The Doctor looked up, an indignant expression on his face._

_“Of course we will!” he protested._

_With a smirk, Jamie folded his arms across his chest._

_“I’ll believe that when I see it.”_

*

She did not pretend to understand the nature of the machine, and, whilst outwardly, she liked to allow both Jamie and the Doctor to believe that she considered herself above the effort of _pretending_ to understand it, its very nature still infuriated her. She was well read, after all, impossibly well-educated even by late 21st century standards, the nature of the machine should not have evaded her as it did—and yet still she found herself frustrated by it.

Perhaps it was the Doctor’s refusal to clarify things in a rational manner, for often it seemed that every time she gleaned some sort of understanding as to its workings, he would later contradict this, drawing her attention to some previously unstated ‘ _fact_ ’ that she had not been aware of in what she considered to be the most infuriating and patronising manner possible.

Oh, there’s more use in trying to understand the nature of the nature of the birds that left in winter and came back in summer, Jamie had said when she had raised the issue with him, and then he had promptly become impatient with her when she had attempted to explain exactly why birds _do_ leave in winter and come back in summer. You don’t really need to know these things, he had protested, somethings you just have to accept things at face value. And yet, such was not Zoe Heriot’s nature. 

It had been two weeks now since both the Doctor and Jamie had departed and the TARDIS was quiet and dull, the only sign of life the occasional glimpse of a silver cat that seemed both impossible and unsettling and left Zoe with the feeling that she was somehow being watched. The Doctor had not mentioned anything about a cat living in the TARDIS, but then neither had he before mentioned anything about there being a TARDIS _within_ the TARDIS before he had ushered Jamie across the threshold of the strange little marble pagoda beneath the cloister room and told her that, were they gone longer than a year, she should come and find them.

A year, she had protested incredulously as the pagoda had faded away with the soft sound of its wheezing dematerialisation and the chiming of bells.

“A _year_!” she had said again to herself, alone save for the occasional silver cat, that she was not fully convinced was actually there.

Two weeks alone was quite enough of that, she thought to herself, and resolved to go an adventure by herself.

*

London was cold that autumn, and she had felt self-conscious in the form-fitting uniform she had been accustomed to both in her position as an astrometricist on-board Space Station W3, and during her childhood in the academy. This London during this autumn, she thought, was so much more judgemental than anything she had known before her travels with the Doctor, and, despite her understanding of a great many things—the machine notwithstanding—Zoe Heriot was still a 16-year-old girl, and even in an unfamiliar time, was still conscious of the way she might be treated by other 16-year-old girls.

She had returned to the TARDIS after the first day and attempted to coordinate her outfit accordingly, but the manner in which people dressed here seemed so purposeless to her, so haphazard, that her anxiety was never fully forgotten.

Three weeks into the absence of the Doctor and Jamie, the TARDIS occupying a lonely space on Hornsey Lane Gardens, N6, a place suitably middle-class enough to not raise any eyebrows as to the curiousness of its presence, Zoe felt that she was beginning to get the hang of things. _Passing_ , was a word she had read on the fragile internet, though she also felt that she was somewhat appropriating the concept for her own needs simply due to ignorance and an eagerness to be grounded within the time that she, for the moment, lived within.

It was troublesome, she thought, sitting at a table in a coffee shop with a glass of something frothy and vaguely beige in shade before her. On W3, she had not needed to worry about things such as a specific privilege relating to her ethnicity or gender; on W3, she did not have to worry about how her sexuality might be perceived, as it was generally accepted in 2079 that no relationship was technically monogamous and that gender was a social identity rather than an inherited factor. And whilst Zoe had never given pause to consider any incongruity between her assigned identity and the identity in which she felt most comfortable, she did not rule out the possibility of this changing; she was 16-years-old, and whilst she felt she knew herself fairly well, she would have been a poor astrometricist if she did not account for such concepts as the movement of both physical objects and social conventions. 

Sat amidst the noise of the coffee shop, that tall glass of frothy beige something-or-other before her, Zoe felt that she needed to consider the matter of identity in such places more thoroughly to fit in. Dressed in a woollen dress with a colourful collar that she felt must have belonged to a previous companion of the Doctor’s, its vintage from somewhere within the previous few decades of past history, she had also found a satin bomber jacket within the TARDIS wardrobe with the single word ‘ _Ace_ ’ scrawled upon its back and a pair of white baseball boots. Within the wardrobe, there were a variety of clothes, the presence of which confused her; she had seen items that she had recently acquired suddenly aged and covered in plastic, and, as with most things, the Doctor would playfully refuse to confirm as to whether the wardrobe was consistent with the time within the rest of the machine or if it was itself a location outside of the regular flow of things, but, whatever the case, she also found a draw full of assorted electronics abandoned by their owners, mobile phones dating from anywhere around the mid-20th century to communication devices far more complex than anything they had used on W3. 

She picked one with a picture of an apple on the back because it looked quaint and like the kind of thing a child might have, but, in truth, she found it frustrating to use, and wondered how anyone could ever converse properly with such a device if it kept running out of charge whilst she was away from the TARDIS. It was, however, a handy tool for accessing the internet and filling in the gaps in her knowledge that her woeful recollection of history had left her, and, in this way, she found herself spending an awful lot of time in coffee shops with frothy beige drinks before her, sat next to a plug socket and a device that necessitated regular charging and a third-party router via which to connect to the internet as the device informed her she was apparently ‘ _out of credit_ ’ and the Doctor had not left her with one of the cards that everyone here used to buy things on the internet with. In fact, the only money she had was that which she had found loose in the pockets of clothes in the wardrobe and scattered around the various rooms of the TARDIS, and a fair amount of such coinage was, in actual fact, utterly useless in the early 21st century.

It was in one such crowded coffee shop in leafy North London, that, whilst hunched over her phone near a plug socket, Zoe Heriot had first met Victoria Waterfield, a student at the London College of Graphology.

*

“I’m so sorry,” she said in the softest voice Zoe had heard in all of three weeks, “would you mind terribly if I sat here?”

She looked around, clutching a number of folders under her arm and precariously carrying a plastic tray with a pot of tea and a large cup and saucer.

“It’s just there isn’t any space elsewhere,” the girl said, her cheeks rosy red with embarrassment.

Zoe looked her up and down for a moment.

“I shouldn’t mind at all,” she said after a while, offering the girl a smile.

Relief flashed across the younger girl’s face as she gratefully placed her tray down, a slop of hot water escaping the spout of the pot and splashing against the cheap plastic. With a grateful sigh, she pulled out the chair opposite Zoe and sat down.

“I promise I shan’t disturb you,” she nodded meekly, gesturing at her armful of books.

“Oh, you wouldn’t be disturbing me at all,” Zoe answered, leaning forward, “to be honest, I should be grateful of the distraction from this dreadful thing.”

With disdain, she gestured at the phone at her elbow.

The younger girl’s eyes glanced down at it and then back up at her.

“Yes,” she murmured, “everyone here seems to have one, though I don’t. I still prefer pen and paper.”

She caught herself and blushed furiously.

“I suppose that’s quite quaint to you, you probably think it terribly old fashioned.”

“A little,” Zoe conceded, and then nodded at the phone once more, “not that these things are much better.”

The young girl smiled.

“They’re quite vexing, I hear.”

“Quite!” Zoe agreed and then extended her hand. “I’m Zoe Heriot, nice to meet you.”

The other inclined her head and gently shook Zoe’s hand, the lightest touch she had ever felt, Zoe noted, a touch that sent a thrill of excitement through and caused her to become quite unexpectedly flushed.

“My name is Victoria,” she answered, “Victoria Waterfield. I’m studying graphology near-by, and, well, I was expecting to be collected by some friends of mine, but it turns out they’re somewhat late. Several weeks late, it would appear.”

Zoe snorted slightly and instantly regretted it, hoping the other girl wouldn’t notice.

“Oh, it sounds like your friends ought to meet my friends. I’m in much the same position myself.”

Victoria’s face lit up.

“Really? Oh, it’s wonderful talking to someone who understands. Tell me, are you in lodgings here? I have to take a train to London when I attend class. It’s terribly bothersome.”

Zoe could hardly call the TARDIS lodgings. She paused for a moment, trying to consider quite how to explain the situation. The girl was so young, 14, maybe 15-years-old at best, and she seemed so sheltered that she couldn’t possibly understand if Zoe were to try and explain about the TARDIS and the Doctor and Jamie. But she was, so Zoe thought, exactly the type of girl that Jamie would like, meek and humble, the kind of girl that needed help when it came to anything too practical. She felt the faintest pang of jealousy imagining Jamie with this girl, and not because she had designs on Jamie, lovable and honest as he was, she was sure.

On W3, she had not given much consideration to what type of person she might really like. Being a graduate of the Elite Programme, being expected to hold down an adult position when girls of her age would still have been in school only a decade or two earlier, Zoe Heriot considered herself an adult despite the immaturity of her feelings. She had liked a number of her peers in her time in the Programme, all of them of different gender identities, and she had not truly considered the idea of her sexuality beyond the notion that she liked who she liked—not, of course, that she had had much occasion to express such feelings. In the Programme, she had earnt the nickname of ‘ _the Library_ ,’ due to her eidetic memory, and the sense of _otherness_ this had caused her—along with the general frustration of adolescence, feelings that she could understand but could not explain away—had left Zoe both lonely and increasingly resentful.

She squirmed in her seat.

“Not exactly. I have a place to stay but it’s not terribly convenient, and I have to admit that I am somewhat short of funds.”

With sudden enthusiasm, the young girl reached across the small table and clutched Zoe’s hands.

“Oh, you must come and stay with me then! I am staying at a lovely house in Kent, and the Doctor left me one of these—” As quickly as she reached out, she had released Zoe, searching through her handbag and producing a small card of thin plastic. “—one of these credit cards.”

She leant forward conspiratorially.

“Did you know that if you simply place one of these on the table by the counter when saying what you want, they _trust_ that you have money and don’t ask you to pay?”

Zoe blinked slowly, and she wasn’t entirely sure what part of this surprised her more: the fact that this girl, 14-years-old and dressed in more layers than Zoe could rightly describe, actually knew the Doctor, or that the Doctor had left her both a source of income _and_ a house to live in.

And this was how things began.

*

The house on Allen Road was large, impossibly so. On warm days, when the sun was bright, Zoe thought that perhaps the house might be as big, and as oddly displaced, as the TARDIS itself. In the hallway, there was an old photograph of the Doctor in a ridiculous fur coat alongside a man that Victoria informed her was the groundskeeper of the house, once upon a time. Zoe had asked her then if the house still had a family caring for it, but she had just shaken her head and said that she hadn’t seen anyone.

In the living room, there was a snow globe with an exact replica of the house which fascinated Victoria no end. Every now and then, she would rise from the silk sofa and take it from the mantle place and shake it up and down, watching with intent as the snow fell over the miniature house. It was in these moments that Zoe thought the other girl looked exactly like a child, despite the fact that there was only a year or so between them, and she felt a knot in her stomach that she did her best to ignore.

The house, she learnt from various letters and notes left about, both belonged to the Doctor and did not belong to the Doctor, in that she learnt he owned it in 2019 but had not personally brought it despite having already met himself upon the shore of a beach on a stable planet within a black hole sometime around 1970 and begin informed specifically of his recent purchase of the house, presumably so that he would know where it was when he had abandoned Victoria.

And the fact that he had not informed her of the house infuriated Zoe immensely. The place was so unsubtle, the second ‘l’ of Allen Road painted over so the road sign now read ‘ _Alien Road_ ,’ and it irked that the Doctor had so readily abandoned her within the TARDIS whilst he owned a perfectly good house where she could have stayed, and, indeed, had already extended the offer to Victoria.

She tried not to think about when Victoria had met the Doctor and Jamie or what would happen when they came back for her and were confused by the presence of an astrometricist from 2079 in the house, as _that_ Doctor and that Jamie certainly had not met her yet or even stepped foot on Space Station W3. 

Being left alone in the house on Allen Road whilst Victoria travelled back and forth to North London for her graphology classes was also not ideal. Going through the drawers of the house, she had found another collection of absurd electronics and insisted that Victoria had taken a phone with her.

“Just in case,” she had said, pushing the cold shape of it into the younger girl’s hand, holding onto her grasp for slightly longer than was necessary.

Despite her initial reluctance when it came to the use of the device, Victoria soon became alarmingly accustomed to it, delivering messages with pictorial iconography and abbreviations that Zoe could not make head nor tails of. Sometimes she would send stark pictures filtered from the internet which would make Zoe feel suddenly very old.

“What is it?” she would ask.

“Oh, it’s a meme,” Victoria would reply with childlike delight.

“I fully understand mimesis, thank you very much,” she would counter with frustration, “I simply don’t understand why it’s funny.”

Another of Victoria’s favoured inventions of the time was the television, somewhat more primitive than the stereovision Zoe remembered from her childhood but the premise was the same.

One evening, whilst attempting to make a choice as to what she wanted to watch, torn between garish films with names like _Blood on Satan’s Claw_ and an old television play about Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll, Victoria had reached out across the silk sofa and put her arm around Zoe, and then, giggling frightfully, pulled away.

“What was that?” Zoe had asked in confusion.

“Oh,” said Victoria between giggles, “it’s Netflix and chill.”

Zoe Heriot had stared blankly at her, failing to understand, which, in turn, had caused Victoria to giggle all the more readily.

Such gestures increased over time and became no small cause for concern for Zoe as she did not know if she was interpreting them correctly or if they were simply expressions of childish affections. And yet perhaps she did Victoria a disservice in this, she thought, as, at the time of such expressions, the younger girl was far more observant of the changes in the culture around her, and the longer they remained in 2019, the more comfortable Victoria seemed.

Similarly, it became increasingly obvious that the 14-year-old girl was not as interested in graphology as she had been before Zoe had moved into the house and begun to occupy both her time and thoughts. On rainy days, when Victoria would fail to find the motivation to make the arduous journey into London for her classes, they would stay in and try on each other’s clothes, dressing up as the other and imitating each other and then falling about laughing all over the place and running screeching through the rooms of the house as teenage girls let loose without the constrictions of authority are wont to do—at least Zoe was assured by Victoria that this was what they were wont to do, and, having not been afforded the chance to be a teenager, Zoe felt she could not argue as she had no basis of comparison. She harboured doubts, however; was this really what teenage girls did or was this simply what Victoria Waterfield had wanted for some time to do?

Only half-dressed and wild with laughter, it was then that Zoe Heriot had first leant in and kissed the younger girl and the atmosphere had immediately changed, a sudden deadly seriousness falling over the 14-year-old as she hungrily and messily returned Zoe’s kisses and then abruptly pulled away.

“We shouldn’t,” she said, blushing and turning away, “it’s wicked.”

Zoe blinked slowly, confused by the younger girl’s reaction.

“Procreation is an act shared between a man and a woman.”

Again, Zoe blinked.

“I’m not trying to _procreate_ with you, Victoria.”

Confused and suddenly tearful, Victoria turned to look at her with a hurt expression.

“Then why did you kiss me?”

The other girl shrugged.

“Because I wanted to.”

“Oh, I wanted you to, as well,” Victoria wailed suddenly. “It’s terribly wicked, isn’t it?”

Again, Zoe shrugged.

“Not especially.” She sighed, and patted Victoria on the leg. 

“I find it confusing,” Victoria said, still tearful, still looking away. “There are lots of women and men here who do such things and no one blinks an eye, but, oh, Zoe, I never had the words for this when I was younger! Well, not except the bad ones and they were mostly about men.”

Gently, her fingers glided over Victoria’s exposed legs.

“If it helps, I find it confusing too, not for the same reasons, but because it seems so ridiculous here, people are still so concerned with all these same ideas that you mention, the idea of having children. It’s bewildering how they manage to survive, really.”

Ignoring the cold distance in her voice, Victoria turned to face her once more, tears warm on her cheeks.

“Oh, Zoe, have you ever… have you ever…?” her voice trailed off.

Unexpectedly, Zoe felt her cheeks warm.

“Well, no,” she said, “but I think I understand the theory. I’ve read it about it before.”

“Oh, I haven’t either!” Victoria exclaimed, all the more tearfully.

There was silence then, and, not knowing what else to do, again, Zoe leant forwards and kissed her friend.

*

The first time they had sex was a confusing and tiring affair, and yet the promise of it was exciting enough that one thing led to the other. Zoe liked to pretend that, being the older girl and hailing from what she termed ‘ _a far more sophisticated climate_ ,’ she possessed far more understanding of bedroom manners. Despite this, Victoria often seemed to take the initiative in any such engagement.

The internet, Zoe thought, primitive as it was in 2019, was a great equaliser.

As the autumn turned to winter and the chill set in with its accompanied strings of fairy lights and coloured tinsel, as the two girls decorated the tree together, exchanged gifts by the fireplace and ate Chinese takeaway on Christmas Day because neither had had the prescience of mind to do the food shopping that week, Zoe Heriot and Victoria Waterfield found themselves thinking less and less of the past or the future. Occasionally, now and again, Zoe would remember the poor TARDIS left lonely on a stretch of Hornsey Lane Gardens, its corridors filled only with the ghostly shadows of once-cats and things that had yet to happen, and she felt a pang of guilt, wondering what had happened to the Doctor and Jamie and the curious little jade pagoda.

The winter turned to spring, spring to summer, and, in July, they found themselves in Soho, rainbows painted upon their cheeks, heads adorned with flower crowns, holding hands and giggling in the crowds, sneaking sips of vodka from flasks in-between sugary energy drinks and singing loud to every song they heard on the radio, making up the words when they did not know them.

For the first time in her life, Zoe Heriot felt as if she was not outside, as if she was a part of something so much more, whilst Victoria Waterfield, so recently orphaned by her father’s murder, found family.

And thus, it was when autumn once more came along, on a bright Sunday morning when both girls lay together in bed, the sunlight playing across the sheets through a crack in the curtains, that abruptly Zoe’s phone began to ring, vibrating violently on the bedside table and rousing her from Victoria’s side.

Sleepily, she rolled over and pawed at the phone, pushing back her dark hair and lifting it to her ear and mumbling a greeting.

‘ _Oh, hello, Zoe,_ ’ came a familiar voice, ‘ _I was wondering if you might come and collect us. You see, ah, well, you see, we’ve encountered a slight bit of bother._ ’

She sat up abruptly, instantly awake, the sheets falling away from her slender frame.

“Doctor!” she proclaimed. “Where are you?”

At the Doctor’s name, Victoria likewise sat up, her long hair a tangled mess, her expression one of surprise, like a startled kitten. Zoe smiled softly as she turned to look at the younger girl, momentarily forgetting the urgency in the Doctor’s voice.

‘ _Well, we appear to be on a ship of sorts, you see,_ ’ the Doctor continued with hesitation.

‘ _Ach, tell her the truth, Doctor,_ ’ she heard Jamie call in the background.

‘ _Yes, thank you, Jamie, I was just getting to that,_ ’ he snapped back. ‘ _Well, we are on a ship, you see. Except we’re locked in the brig. And it’s heading for the sun. And, so, I was wondering if you might like to bring the TARDIS along and collect us, as we can’t quite get to the pagoda._ ’

“Well, Doctor,” Zoe said, remembering her annoyance, “whilst you’ve been away, I’ve made a friend. She knows you. Say hello, Victoria.”

“Hello, Victoria,” Victoria smiled playfully.

There was silence on the other end.

‘ _Oh dear,_ ’ said the Doctor at last. ‘ _Oh no, well this won’t do, you weren’t supposed to leave the TARDIS, Zoe. Why, don’t you see, this complicates things terribly—_ ’

“In that case, Doctor, I suggest you phone your earlier self, the one from before you met me, the one that left Victoria here and ask him to help you out.”

‘ _Oh, but I can’t, Zoe, don’t you see? That’s the same me as I am now, not the me I was before._ ’

Zoe frowned at this.

“Whatever are you talking about?”

‘ _Zoe, the situation is really quite urgent and I am making this call from my sonic screwdriver—_ ’

“Your sonic what?” Zoe exclaimed.

“How does one make a telephone call from a screwdriver?” Victoria asked with a frown.

‘ _Please, Zoe, I really must insist._ ’

Although he claimed to be far older than he should be, Zoe often felt the Doctor was resolutely a product of the 20th century, an awkward little man who, for all his talents, was easily panicked and highly emotive when things did not go his way.

Zoe turned and winked at Victoria.

“Well, Doctor, I suppose I shall see what we can do.”

‘ _Oh no, you mustn’t bring Victoria, she should still be waiting for me not heading off on further adventures, it will complicate things too much, Zoe, really, I must—_ ’

“Oh, do be quiet, Doctor, I suggest you sit tight and wait for us to come and save you.”

“We shan’t be long, promise!” Victoria called out.

With a broad grin, Zoe hung up and returned the phone back to the bedside table.

“I suppose we should get going then,” the younger girl said reluctantly, barely suppressing a yawn.

Zoe’s smile was undiminished.

“We have a time machine at our disposal,” she beamed, “I’m sure that whenever we leave it shan’t make the slightest difference as to when we arrive.”

And, with a giggle, the two girls thus fell back into bed together.


End file.
